Nfield update – 20 July 2021

On Tuesday 20 July we will release a new version of Nfield. This version introduces a new survey metric and changes to the values when Nfield will issue warnings about these metrics. We also want to use this opportunity to communicate the Nfield CAPI app update strategy.

New metric: Expensive commands counts
We have added a new metric to the Nfield Manager, called the "Expensive command count". This metric is based on use of the *STRAT, *GETLFQLIST and *GETDATA commands in the questionnaire script. These commands are especially heavy on the Nfield system and should be kept within reasonable limits.

New metrics for Warn and Stop limits
After extensive research we decided to change the limit values to Warn and Stop (survey) for all interviewing metrics. In effect this means that you will be seeing a lot less warnings for your surveys, but when you do see them, it will mean that some serious attention should be given to your survey. The survey with a warning is not only very costly for the Nfield system as a whole, but it is, more importantly, also impacting respondent experience in a negative way.

The new limits are more generous than the best practices for market research. They do offer you more than enough room for complex surveys. We ask you to take all effort that is needed to reduce any warnings you see after this update to a minimum. From 1 September 2021, Nfield will automatically "system stop" interviews that are "red" on any metric and consider it a dropped-out interview. More specific information will be provided on this topic in future updates.

Update on the Nfield CAPI app strategy per 1 October 2021
As of Thursday 1 October 2021, the minimum version of the Nfield CAPI app that can be used for fieldwork will be 1.115.000.

Interviewing devices that are running a version of the app that is lower than 1.115.000 will no longer be able to synchronize with Nfield. As a domain administrator it is important to act and share this news within your organization, so it gets to the attention of the people that should take action.

If you are working with older Nfield CAPI apps that will stop being supported, now is the time to ensure business continuity by keeping CAPI devices updated with the required minimum app versions.

Miscellaneous
With this update we addressed several enhancements to help our users with their fieldwork. Notable is:

• The NfieldChicago Release Candidate was promoted to NfieldChicago within your domain as announced on 8 june 2021.

As always, please share this information with all relevant people in your organization.

Kind regards,